After six years of decline, the population in some rural areas is starting to grow again while growth in large cities slows down.
"Rural areas, defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as counties outside cities and their suburbs, gained population between 2016 and 2017 for the first time since 2010. They grew by about 33,000 residents nationwide, after losing more than 15,000 residents the year before," Tim Henderson reports for Stateline.
Heavily agricultural areas are growing; they tend to have fewer jobs available, but may attract people looking for a cheaper place to live or retire. Rural areas with manufacturing jobs are growing too. The biggest growth is in rural counties with a town of at least 10,000 people.
William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, told Henderson that "This seems to be the beginning of a return to population dispersal after a decade or so of clustering into cities and the biggest metropolitan areas . . . Steady improvement in the economy and recovering housing markets may be prompting employers and job seekers to look again at areas that were growing before the Great Recession — suburbs, exurbs and small towns."
from The Rural Blog http://ift.tt/2DPI8j7 Rural counties are making a comeback, Census data shows - Entrepreneur Generations
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